There is a lot of New York State taxpayer money being spent in California these days.A rather amusing irony arises considering the fact that those who would save Buffalo’s failing economy take THEIR money and spend it out of state. UB2020’s chief architects — President Simpson and his would-be interim president — both consider California not Buffalo their “homes.” The actual payroll and continuing retirement compensation moving out of state is hard to track because much of the money comes from ‘hidden’ sources, but some online estimates have put President Simpson’s financial compensation from UB at over $700,000 per year. Ditto Simpson’s interim president designate who reportedly earns $300,000 per year on the regular payroll alone. The #2 man (soon to be #1 if the administration has their way), according to well-publicized sources, only resides in Buffalo during the weekdays and commutes to his California home each weekend. And of course there’s always the money paid to that pricey California consulting firm that helped develop the grand plan with the two masterminds. UB2020 may not help save Buffalo, but New York State taxpayers are sure helping California’s ailing economy.

More on the California connection (just a couple of quick examples to wet your appetite):

California consulting firm hired to engineer and orchestrate the failed UB2020 plan (no comment should be needed, but just in case you still don't get it, you can start here),

California architect hired to design UB's new super-sized solar array (come on guys, nobody at UB's School of Architecture could handle the job of laying out a few grids?), and

California consulting firm hired to locate candidates for UB's new president (OK, you may have had to go out of Buffalo for this one, but certainly somebody in New York State could have managed this task; better yet, how about taking out a few advertisements in the national newspapers, academic magazines, and professional journals read by potential candidates? Do you really think that some high-priced California placement agency has a secret database of people searching for university president positions? Come on, anybody worth leading UB through another one of our crises reads [the Sarah Palin types aside) the professional journals including the employment advertisements!).

The UB administration continues to waste money in despotic give-a-ways that could instead be used to offer more undergraduate classes. The kick-back and patronage game continues unabated, networking being a synonym for corruption, no MBA required.

Warning: The Buffalo Blog Frog posts raw and uncensored commentaries which have been known to provoke thinking in some people!

The UB Faculty Senate Executive committee (FSEC) does indeed present an elite group of UB faculty members. Nearly two-thirds of them earn over $100,000 per year with the median salary being $123, 166. They have been rewarded well for their service by the University administration as undoubtedly they deserve. We faculty members at-large owe them a great deal of thanks for their service to us and to the University as well, and this commentary is not intended to impugn or criticize them individually in any manner. But do they collectively represent UB’s faculty?

As most everyone at UB knows there is a great deal of variation in faculty salaries, course loads, departmental duties, and extra-service compensation; even the ‘standardized’ small offices allegedly based by Albany’s planners on the size of the office assigned to a junior New York State Senator seems to have a number of apparent exceptions found around our three campuses. “All pigs [may be are] equal, but some pigs are [clearly] more equal than others” (The reference is to Orwell, not a disparaging remark about those with big offices or ‘fat’ paychecks.). UB’s faculty is actually a very heterogeneous population with some members clearly ‘making out’ much better than others. So who are our FSEC representatives? And do they truly represent the bulk of UB’s faculty population?

The data compiled for this brief analysis are based on information provided by the Faculty Senate website which lists the roster for the 2009-2010 year only and information provided by public-source databases for 2009- and 2010-year salaries. Among our 23 FSEC members we seem to have a representative distribution across our various schools at UB. However, almost half of the select group FSEC members earn greater than $125,000 per year from their regular academic appointments. This figure should be considered a minimum and is likely to be a significant underestimate (e.g., extra-service pay and summer salaries are not included in this calculation which would boost many of these salaries up considerably). Data regarding the median UB academic salary level are not readily obtainable, but considering the rank of beginning Associate Professor to represent the mid-level academic rank at UB this places the median salary of most FSEC members nearly double that of most UB “professors.” And the differences are even greater figuring extra-service and other financial compensation not included in their base salaries. A rather elite group indeed, but deservingly so one must assume. So where’s the “typical" UB professor earning between $60,000 and $70,000 per year? There is just 13% of the FSEC representing them.

Although we should all be appreciative of the service provided by the FSEC, we need to make sure that they represent the best interests of the UB faculty as a whole and not just as perceived by the top-tier ‘super-achievers.’ Granted their exemplary service to the University and to their respective fields as evidenced by their much higher-than-average salary compensation might argue that they should ‘weigh in’ on such issues as university governance much more heavily than most of us ever so humble faculty members. But that’s really a decision to be made by the faculty at-large and not by the elite group themselves. What is needed is an open dialog that encompasses a much wider cross section of UB faculty -- one that is unencumbered by censors (AKA “moderators”) or by those with no time (or interest) to participate in matters that affect every long-term faculty member at this institution. With all due respect, some faculty members have more of a vested interest in these proceedings than others, not only because of their seniority in service but also because of their intention to remain at UB as opposed to using this institution as a ‘stepping stone’ to what THEY perceive as ‘bigger and better things.’ It is appropriate to point out that some members of the FSEC certainly meet these criteria, and we are thankful for that even if we find ourselves in disagreement with how they are handling some of these proceedings.

Editorial note: This is a working draft; the commentary will be updated with some performance-based quantitative measures latter. Grant support, publications, and citation counts can be used for most FSEC members to obtain a rough estimate to determine if their professional contributions are commensurate with their top-tier salaries. For some disciplines this does not work (e.g., Libraries, Nursing), but these departments already rank among the lowest in financial compensation at the University.

Warning: The Buffalo Blog Frog posts raw and uncensored commentaries which have been known to provoke thinking in some people!

In short, they pay the bills! The undergraduate student population provides a certain level of financial stability through payment of their tuition and fees and through state subsidies based on the head-count. University reputations are slow to build and slow to lose; thus, undergraduates will continue to be attracted to a school that has historically enjoyed a strong reputation even in times its undergraduate and other programs are suffering. This provides a type of economic inertia that helps stabilize university budgets and permits realistic projections of future expenditures. UB needs a larger undergraduate population to provide this type of stability in funding and 10,000 new students is not ultimately an unrealistic number.

Good graduate students in strong programs are not typically tuition payers -- they are in fact cheap labor (e.g., the proverbial “ghosts in the machine”). For their efforts we owe them tuition remission and a stipend, ever so inadequate compensation for their talents and long hours of dedicated work. They are not revenue-generating sources directly; they financially cost the university in many cases. The undergraduate population remains our main source of stable revenue and they need better “care and feeding.” Yes, our strong graduate programs and graduate students contribute immensely to our reputation and they help us to obtain better and better external funding, but they don't pay the bulk of the bills. And good graduate students in strong graduate programs obviously contribute importantly to our undergraduate educational mission, but they don't pay the bills.

Of course Albany politics can make the pay-off variable through unilateral changes in policy, but undergraduate tuition revenue is still more stable than funding from grant agencies and the professors that hold these grants and contracts. Research-intensive professors are known to abruptly pull-up stakes and leave, taking with them their funding and the all so important indirect costs associated with their large grants. (Remember Jeffrey Skolnick, founding director of the Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics, the “rock star" of bioinformatics? He one of a long list of people holding special titles such as "Distinguished Professor" that has abruptly left town.) Many high-profile professors are finicky, others just constantly shopping for a better deal; many have left UB abruptly and many more will continue to leave in the future. This is NOT a stable source of revenue, even in at times it is extremely lucrative. UB simply can't bank on this income. Even the University planners must realize this; otherwise why expand the undergraduate population so dramatically with UB2020? After all, you can pretty much count on at least some undergraduates competing with faculty for parking spaces.

Indirect costs generated from grants and contracts obviously contribute importantly to the University's operating budget and subsidize the cost of our graduate programs. In fact the indirect cost revenue appears to be the major reason the administration is interested in “research.” They’ve seemingly forgotten that the real purpose of research is to advance knowledge not generate revenue for university administrators to spend on their favorite projects, be it football, dormitories, or downtown campus buildings. Research money is the TOOL not the objective of any legitimate research program -- the pursuit of knowledge remains the objective which sometimes costs money and sometimes does not.

UB needs a better plan for building its undergraduate population and not simply the fantasy of build the physical space (and fill it will ‘instructors’), and they will come. Quality is of the utmost importance and UB’s current policies simply leave too many professors out of the classroom and fill the vacancies with poorly prepared graduate-student instructors. UB needs a real plan, with a workable approach to building its undergraduate student population based on attracting quality students to Buffalo for study at a premier institution. Students need to get their ‘money’s worth’ and more, and then they’ll be flocking to UB from across the region and perhaps even across the country.

UB has some strong graduate programs carried largely by the efforts of individual faculty and we have many outstanding faculty members who through their research and creative work contribute immensely to developing a better, stronger reputation for our University. Indeed UB is prominently on the ‘map’ in several areas. The administration needs to learn how to facilitate its faculty and not just dictate new directives based on the desired financial outcome of its faculty's work. Some scholarly activities bring in money, some do not, but they all contribute to building an outstanding university that undergraduate and graduate students alike seek to fulfill their educational objectives. Build that, and they will come!

Reallocating funding from the instructional core into ‘project UB2020’ has been to the detriment of undergraduate and graduate student instruction. In the hurry to build the buildings and to recruit a few ‘star-caliber’ new faculty members, UB has pillaged its very faculty and resources that make a university a university. The University needs to pay more attention to the “care and feedings” of its regular faculty—better salaries (not limiting pay raises just to administrative favorites), better working conditions (That's my office?!), and a better feeling of being appreciated and valued as a University at Buffalo professor, even for faculty members not bringing in the grant money (croak, croak) UB too highly prizes: then “they will come.”

The title UB often uses to describe its perception of itself gives away the administration's ulterior motives: "major research-intensive university" obviously ignores the contributions of the "arts" to the "College of Arts and Sciences" which comprises the single largest portion of our undergraduate population. Why not simply describe UB as a "premier university" or as a "leading university." The descriptor "research-intensive" defines its NEW mission which ultimately is linked with generating revenue from the indirect costs associated with external funding sources. (The passive acceptance of such "New-Speak" around UB has been phenomenal.) Hence, it has become the job of faculty to raise money for the administration (i.e., seek external sources of funding) which is not the job most of us signed on for when we were hired or is it the mission of any credible leading university.

Of course the undergraduate student population does much more than just contribute their tuition money to our endeavors at the University -- they enrich our academic environment by stimulating our thinking and energizing us with their contagious enthusiasm, demand that we explain our latest ideas in simple, logical terms that even a journal or grant reviewer might understand, keep us sharp at fielding questions which come from directions often impossible to anticipate, and enrich our lives in many more ways including helping us remember that knowledge needs to be effectively communicated to those whom would develop pragmatic applications of often very esoteric work and to those whom further build upon what we've 'learned' in our lifetimes' commitment to the pursuit of knowledge. In keeping with the administration's apparent objective of expanding the undergraduate population under "project UB2020," this commentary focused on the financial aspects of their contributions. And for that we faculty are also appreciative.

Warning: The Buffalo Blog Frog posts raw and uncensored commentaries which have been known to provoke thinking in some people!

Now it's time to swing the pendulum in the other direction: let's recall (or more correctly, "ask") President Simpson to remain our university president. Let's get on the bandwagon and support him, albeit with a little more influence from his underlings (i.e., the 'real' faculty and not just his faculty elite) and playing a slightly different tune (we're on a bandwagon, remember? ). Time to back-off the more radical position voiced earlier. He can even keep his sacred COW (Chief Operations Wrangler, sorry, I'll have to look-up the official title but I do rather like the acronym ) if he promises not to try to mold (another pun) this university in the image of a business corporation. Having a business adviser or two assisting in the daily operation of a university could be a big asset; just don't have them setting program directives or determining the future mission of our University -- without having been there themselves (i.e., working within the university ranks with NORMAL professorial duties), they don't really understand what it's all about! Or to put it more bluntly (which is what the Buffalo Blog Frog has been known to do on occasion), their perception of what WE do is little more sophisticated than any other undergraduate we teach; do you want the undergraduates running the University?

The Buffalo Blog Frog had been awakened from his slumber due to recent University events that demanded a forceful response. But in the ruckus that followed several important, positive-aspects of the University and its current administration have been neglected. First and foremost, let's recall John B. Simpson as our University President. He has accomplished a lot of positive things during his rather brief tenure, things that have been overshadowed by recent developments and his often too grandiose plans for the University. He may indeed be the right man for the job if he can discard the overpowering influence of his California consortium.

The Buffalo Blog Frog never asked for President Simpson's resignation or cheered his intended departure. We were critical of his UB2020 plan and we strongly feel his choice for an interim president was downright insulting. But we NEVER called for his resignation. So this isn't an about-face (although we've been known to do that too); this is simply a clarification of our position.

First, he needs to balance the influence of his California consortium and elite local businessman with regular UB faculty and perhaps a better cross section of Buffalo businessmen. He needs to come in contact with his real faculty and not just the "yes-man" he surrounds himself with that often make fun of his actions behind his back. Perhaps brief consultations with random tenured faculty would be a great start. He presents himself as a earthy, approachable guy but he's either always out of town or in conference with the 'higher-ups' of the University and thus out of touch with the real daily operations of this institution. Perhaps he should teach one, open enrollment undergraduate class himself to see what the real world is like for most of us. (Maybe he could then explain why the admission scores are reportedly increasing for our new student population, but the students we actually see in the classroom seem to be less capable every year of handling advanced undergraduate work such as term papers.) Perhaps at least some of his chief advisers should be down in the trenches on a daily basis. Whatever it takes, he needs to better understand the real world that UB "professors" are operating in and not just that of the elite crowd of "yes-men" that he, like other university presidents, surround themselves with in their 'cabinet.'

Second, he needs to realign the objectives of UB2020 with a plan that does not tear apart UB's academic core. The decision to expand downtown with a third major campus, one that would include undergraduate instruction that could only compete with other local institutions that already have a downtown presence (e.g, ECC) is a mistake. We should be taking students fed up through the local junior college network, not competing with them for students. (No offense intended to ECC, but are we really lowering ourselves to compete with them for the same potential students?) The only instructional programs that should convene on the new downtown campus (if there is to be one) are graduate programs related to the activity of faculty located in the medical corridor. Leave the general undergraduate instruction alone; leave most of the graduate programs where they reside now. And don't worry about community outreach-oriented undergraduate curriculum; that's what ECC and other smaller colleges are already doing with their presence in inner city Buffalo. We shouldn't put ourselves in a league competing with the small schools in the area.

Third, he needs to better understand what it takes to build a premier undergraduate institution and maybe they WILL come. Granted that is at-best a secondary aim of UB2020, but it is actually a key component if we are to attract an additional 10,000 tuition-paying students from outside the region. UB2020 fell flat on its face with planning this key component which seems to have taken a backwards supply-and-demand business approach rather than an academic approach to building its core undergraduate educational program -- we supply the academic program and the demand (the students) will magically show up at our doorstep overnight. Perhaps this would work if UB had the type of national prominence promoted by our public relations department. But atlas, UB is seen as a local, at best a regional, school by most undergraduates. We draw largely from Western New York and New York City. We don't even draw large numbers of students from areas with other SUNY campuses. We are mainly viewed as a regional school and not likely to draw students even from the mid-West let alone California. And China, well that's a commentary on its own.

The revised plan is a KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) from the Buffalo Blog Frog, as simple as 1, 2, 3. (Hey, now the frog is KISSing the prince. ) Get more in touch with the University, its real faculty, its average students, and the surrounding community past the elite businessmen and the special interests of the California consortium. Realign UB2020 with a plan that will strengthen UB's academic core and with a realistic growth plan that doesn't bankrupt the University and spend its cash reserves. And remember the undergraduatesupon whose back the growth of the University and its reputation ultimately rests; they are our bread-and-butter, hate them and love them as we do. And then perhaps "if you build it" (i.e., a strong academic core), "they WILL come."

Warning: The Buffalo Blog Frog posts raw and uncensored commentaries which have been known to provoke thinking in some people!

Click on the title of this commentary and a new page should open with a text box at the bottom for you to post your commentary. The same principle works for each commentary in this blog, no registration required.

This page is not attached to any inflammatory or controversial commentary that you might be afraid to 'reply' to for fear finding yourself guilty by association. You should be able to reply without registration, but only the blog owner can initiate a new thread. I can spin your comments off as individual threads that others can track and reply to as appropriate. Until there is some activity, there will be a delay to block spammers. If there's any appreciable activity, the gates will be opened for immediate posting and I'll handle spamming case-by-case manually. I do not censor!

FYI: I really have no idea how to do what I'm already doing. I'm an old-time "hacker" (back before that label became derogatory) who simply keeps trying things (i.e., "hacking" around) until something works. I think I can set this up so that registered users can be privileged to initiate a new thread, but I'm not going to waste my time with this until I see some evidence of interest in others posting their comments. --- Cheers

OK, because there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in initiating a topic here (despite the space so generously provided), I suppose it's only keeping with character that the Buffalo Blog Frog have his say, albeit briefly this time.

It doesn't take 5 days to set up a discussion listserv or UBlearns listing. It takes less than 24 hours for either one, and that time is for the administration to approve the new resource (yes, a type of "censorship," but this merits a separate commentary on its own). The gatekeepers (AKA "censors," "moderators," etc.) are obviously waiting for a cooling-down period to elapse when the faculty will once again return to their normal routines and loose interest in self governance. Congratulations to those who have effectively imposed this "time-out" period to further disrupt communication among UB's concerned faculty -- good move, boys.

The Buffalo Blog Frog is a private post (comments only) blog addressing various topics and social commentary as the urge arises. No particular subject, no restricted focus, any topic under the sun (or moon) is open target for the Buffalo Blog Frog -- Rant on!